6 Questions: Sam Trubridge

Sam Trubridge, director of The Playground NZ, is bringing his acclaimed show, Sleep/Wake, to The Ellen Stewart Theatre at La MaMa as part of The New Zealand Performance Festival - March 19-22, 2015.  Sam took time out of preperations for the Festival to answer our 6 Questions.

1. What was the original inspiration behind sleep/wake?

A chance encounter with chronobiologist and sleep scientist Philippa Gander, who became my principal collaborator on this production. She has done some fantastic work with NASA, various airlines around the world, specialising in shift work and fatigue. Through talking with her I became fascinated with the idea that sleep was the opposite state to the extremely self-conscious behaviour of the performing actor. Performance is a kind of logical result of our self-awareness, while sleep is the absence of all social and sentient behaviours. For SLEEP/WAKE I was interested in looking at how I might examine this state on stage somehow. 

2. What should audiences expect from the show?

Surprises! The experience of waking up from sleeping and dreaming is a complete paradigm shift that I try to bring into the show in various ways. So the audience's understanding of the space they are in is turned over a couple of times, collapsing familiar theatrical boundaries by invading the stage in various ways or breaking down the horizon of the performance to include distant places.

3. How do you describe your artistic aesthetic?

For me, the image is as meaningful or as vocal as a line of text. So I try to compose the work with an aesthetic and spatial eloquence which allows the audience to read meanings into it - from the play of light on the walls, to the movement of the set, and the performers' own careful choreography within this. This is the principal motivation within my work as a director/designer - to construct an aesthetic, material, and spatial world that is spellbinding and spectacular in the way that most good set design is, but that also has an authorial presence and dramaturgy.

4. Where does your interest in science come from?

I have always 'played' between science and art. Both have different measures of analytic and creative processes, and both are results of a deep curiosity and interest in the world or how things work. As a child I would play in order to test my understanding of the world around me and my own capabilities, as well as to creatively express myself. This carries through into my work as a director/designer, where I seek out this boundary between art and science practices, or consider my own work as a science of performance production and reception. In the arts we often work with ambiguity, so it is exciting to interact with scientists whose approach to ambiguity is very different. It helps me to articulate and redefine what ambiguity and poetry really is to me.

5. Your dad is renowned furniture designer David Trubridge and your family famously spent several years at sea. How do you remember that experience and how do you think it has influenced your work?

I have very vivid and detailed memories of our life on the boat. My play as a child was so shaped by this environment, and from being in a space of endless motion and rootlessness. Living at sea you had to be able to solve all of your needs and fix anything that went wrong. There were no tradespeople or doctors to call on. As a result my own practice crosses geographic, disciplinary, and cultural boundaries in the way that we did on the boat. There is a flexibility built into my work from this experience, and an interest in working inventively with space, mechanics, and design components. Audiences will also notice how I use light and water on stage, or recognise video footage of my brother William Trubridge, whose career as a world-record breaking free diver has also been influenced significantly by our life at sea.

6. What does working at La MaMa mean to you?

Being able to present SLEEP/WAKE at La Mama is a great honour, for so many reasons. The book that put me onto working in theatre and set design was Julie Taymor's Playing With Fire, so it is really wonderful to be showing my work in the venue where her career started. But even more important is the opportunity to engage with this venue and its community, which continues to lead and maintain its innovative spirit in presenting performance. I love the values that La Mama supports and promotes, and am glad to play a part in this with SLEEP/WAKE and our festival of New Zealand works, which has been assembled and brought to New York City guided by the same principals and spirit. 

- - - - -

La MaMa presents
SLEEP/WAKE
by The Playground NZ

March 19 - 22, 2015 - 4 Performances Only!

The Ellen Stewart Theatre
66 East 4th Street
(between Bowery and Second Avenue)
New York, NY 10003

Tickets: $25 Adults; $20 Students/Seniors; $50 3-ShowNew Zealand Performance Festival Packages also available

For Tickets and Info: CLICK HERE

Guest Post: Sam Trubridge on The New Zealand Performance Festival

FROM THE 
DREAM FACTORY
by Sam Trubridge

New Zealand. To many it seems like a country at the end of the world. In stories about pandemics and nuclear holocaust, the survivors always escape to places like this, far removed from conflict and catastrophe. We even get left off world maps sometimes. That’s us: New Zealand, Aotearoa, The Land of the Long White Cloud. It has been known by other names as well. Ever since the Lord of the Rings trilogy, the country has also promoted itself as ‘Middle Earth’, and is known as a land of pristine natural scenery, and clean, green living. 100% Pure is the name of the Tourism NZ brand. Other common perspectives might include mention of Maori culture, our formidable rugby team, and sheep farming. Like many distant places, New Zealand has been mythologised by the stories that have been told about it to become a land of Hobbits, untouched nature, and breathtaking scenery. But like most myths, they are only partly true. The rolling green fields and Hobbiton landscapes are signs of an indigenous landscape stripped bare, deforested and cultivated for farming. Our rivers are amongst the most polluted and endangered in the world, due to farm run-off, pesticides, fertilisers, and redirection for irrigation.

Audiences for this programme of works in the NZ New Performance Festival will find that we have much in common with American audiences: sharing common experiences, stories, and perspectives. And yet ours is a view from the other side of the world. New Zealand is one of the ‘Antipodes’: a group of nations found on the exact opposite of the world from the global/cultural centres. These countries occupy an alternate time-zone, their seasons are back to front, and are quite literally found beneath the feet of people living in cities like Paris, London, and New York. In this upside-down ‘underworld’ we work while you sleep, and sleep while you work. Recent successes in NZ film-making specialise in making wonder and spectacle, creating innovative special effects and building fantastical worlds like Narnia, Middle Earth, and Pandora. This festival of works at La Mama come from this ‘dream factory’, 18 hours in the future, where our today is your tomorrow. We may speak the same language, share cultural memories, watch the same programmes, and listen to the same music as you; but our perspective comes from our distance, where things are similar but slightly different. James Nokise’s SoSo Gangsta brings US gang culture back to the US via the suburbs of Wellington; David Goldthorpe tells the story of US musician Chet Baker on stage (Chet Baker: Like Someone in Love); Binge Culture present a self-help seminar (For Your Future Guidance) ; LudiCity replay extracts of information from the (US) FOI Act on Listening Posts on the streets around the theatre; and in All Your Wants and Needs Fulfilled Forever we follow our contemporary obsessions with being the lead character or protagonist in our lives that are sold to us through Hollywood blockbusters and computer gaming. These works all play with the export of American culture and concerns to New Zealand, some going as far as the mercurial On the Conditions of Possibilities of Hillary Clinton Taking Me As Her Young Lover. There is also the endless break-up in Binge Culture’s other show, Break-Up, where it seems that the characters are replaying every televised sitcom, romcom, drama, and reality TV in an attempt to reconcile a fated relationship. In the winter of 2006 Marcus McShane cycled across America from LA to New York. Now, in his performance installation Nag he brings a self-powered studio to La Mama, where a bicycle propels his creative industry in a beautiful comment on sustainability that could only come from the eccentric pioneering Kiwi spirit. Finally, in Sleep/Wake the very nature of dreaming and sleeping is examined – where reality and imagination mix in a play between science and performing arts. The work was conceived as a critique of the first world dreams that we inhabit, where environmental disasters and conflicts exist in a mediatised, televised space: always ‘somewhere else’ rather than a part our waking lives. The work is a lament for the distance from global events that is not just a New Zealand condition, but one shared by first world nations, protected by the bubbles of safety in our urban and suburban dormitories.

By bringing this fantastic selection of works to New York City, these artists can do more than open audiences’ eyes to new New Zealand work. The artists can also open their own eyes, and open their work to new possibilities in this stimulating and challenging capital city for performing arts. Into this fantastic #LaMamaEarth programme, the NZ New Performance Festival brings Antipodean concerns from the other side of the world, so that in the shared space of live performance these NZ artists and their NY audiences can reconsider our global cultures together in new ways.

La MaMa presents
THE NEW 
ZEALAND 
PERFORMANCE 
FESTIVAL

March 12th - 29th, 2015


ON THE CONDITIONS AND POSSIBILITIES OF HILLARY CLINTON TAKING ME AS HER YOUNG LOVER 
First Floor Theatre | by Arthur Meek 
March 12, 13, 14 at 7:30pm & 15 at 2pm | 60 minutes | $20
A theatrical lecture by Arthur Meek, a rising star in the New Zealand theatre scene. 

NAG 
La Galleria | by Marcus McShane 
March 18, 19, 20 & 22 at 1pm - 5:30pm | Free
An endurance-based performance-installation that constructs a self-propelled artist studio. 

SLEEP/WAKE 
Ellen Stewart Theatre | by Sam Trubridge 
March 19-21 at 8pm & 22 at 4pm | 7o minutes | $25
FESTIVAL HIGHLIGHT: An award-winning art science performance with stunning visuals by director/designer Sam Trubridge. 

SO SO GANGSTA 
First Floor Theatre | by James Nokise 
March 19, 20, 21 at 7:30pm & 22 at 2pm | 55 minutes | $20
Samoan comedian James Nokise brings hip-hop culture back to the USA via the Pacific and Aotearoa, New Zealand. 

FOR YOUR FUTURE GUIDANCE 
La Galleria | by Binge Culture 
March 18, 19, 20 - 22 at 6pm | 60 minutes | Free
An interactive performance in the style of a self-help seminar, giving you the skills and knowledge to survive the new you-topia. 

BREAK-UP
La Galleria | by Binge Culture
March 21 at 1:30pm - 7:30pm | Performance Installation| Free
There’s no easy way to do this… Five performers, six hours of desperation, negotiation, devastation and emotional blackmail. Come and go from this one-off event as you please – or stay until everything is worked through.

ALL YOUR WANTS AND NEEDS FULFILLED FOREVER 
Ellen Stewart Theatre | by PlayGround Collective 
March 26 at 8pm & 27 at 4pm | 70 minutes | $25
Simon studies video game design, looks after his pet rats, and keeps himself glued to whatever screen is nearest—all to avoid thinking about the recent death of his father. But Simon’s world is turned upside down when a mysterious box is delivered to him that might just contain the Secret to the Universe... An acclaimed new theatre work by writer Eli Kent and director Robin Kerr of the award-winning PlayGround Collective. 

CHET BAKER: LIKE SOMEONE IN LOVE 
Ellen Stewart Theatre | by Goldthorpe Creative 
March 28 at 8pm & 29 at 4pm | 115 minutes | $25
Jazz and theatre brought together on stage in the gripping story of a US music legend. Performed and written by David Goldthorpe. Directed by David Lawrence. 

LISTENING POSTS 
In public places throughout the East Village | by LudiCity | Free
March 19 - 22 | Installation

Tickets now on sale for all shows.

3-Show Ticket Packages Available for $50.  CLICK HERE to buy.

For Tickets and Info: CLICK HERE